All Wrapped Up In Physics

“Whelp,” he sighed hard, sitting down even harder in his neighbor’s lawn chair. “Ain’t that somethin.”

“It’s always somethin,” the neighbor’s wife said, wiping her hands on a dirty apron before accepting the beer her husband held out. 

“Ain’t it always somethin,” his neighbor summarized, cracking his own beer open. 

“How many’s that been now, three? Five?”

“Well, it’s two this month already.” The neighbor’s wife spoke again. He always had a hard time remembering her name. He had a hard time remembering his neighbor’s name. Hell, he had a hard time remembering his own name. Seeing physics wrong would do that to a man, he always figured. Not that he’d understood physics anyway. But that thing a few months ago…a few years ago?…with all the tendrils and lines and weird shapes…well, he knew that it hadn’t been right, whatever it was. Physics or otherwise.

He popped the cap of the beer in his hands, handed to him just before the wife. “I don’t know how you keep track of all those things, little lady.”

“I do it just like anyone else,” she answered, “wri’in it on the walls, ‘a course.” The bottle in her hand was already half empty.

“Keeps things straight, it does,” the husband nodded, wind starting to whip through his sandy hair. Straight. Straight lines in backyards. Lines that went all wrong sometimes being wrapped up in physics, blown in the wind.

The wind. The wind was growing, wasn’t it? Two already this month. How many had he thought it was? Four? He tried to think. The hellhounds he knew, those were why his leg was all wrapped up. He’d written it in marker on the top of his cast so he wouldn’t forget. After the hellhounds was…those mole critters? No, no, those had been before the tentacles and the wrong physics. Or, had it been after? Time was all wrapped up in physics, too, and it went all wrong with those…those… “Hey, what’d your boy call those tentacle things?”

“Mind Flayers,” the neighbor answered instantly. He tapped his shoulder, the words tattooed there, visible on his sleeveless arms. 

“Oh, that’s right.” A tattoo. That’d been smart. Then again, the neighbor always had been a smart guy, growing up in the city and all. Or, had that been himself…? Time was too wrapped up in physics. The moles had been before the mind things, he was sure. So what came after the hellhounds?

The wind was really picking up then as the clouds rolled ever closer, coming across the desert, beautifully visible from the neighbors’ back yard. All the other neighbors, too, stood out with their beers or their wine or their whatever-was-stronger. Mothers were turning around every so often, as if to usher children back inside. But the children had gone. All of them. They’d been called up in the Rapture. That had definitely been before the…the…his eyes took a quick swipe at his neighbor’s shoulder, hoping the lines stayed straight. Mind Flayers. Rapture before the Mind Flayers. Rapture before anything else. That much he knew for sure. Physics may have been all wrong that one time, and time might have been all wrong in his head from watching the portal in the clouds for too long, but it’s hard to forget when God talks to you. 

“Y’all think it’s just a storm this time?” The neighbor asked, dropping his empty bottle at his feet, crunching the broken bits beneath what once was a sturdy workboot as he went to grab another from the cooler he’d brought out. There were always coolers out to watch the storms come in. Weren’t there?

His wife shook her head. “It’s never just a storm, baby.”

“You’re right,” he sighed. “Pete, you want one? Pete?”

“Pete,” the wife said, patting his shoulder as the clouds overtook the sun in the distance. But the world around the clouds stayed lit. Eerie. Like before a tornado. “Pete, that’s you, Pete. You want a beer?”

He nodded, watching the lightning that crackled through the clouds, wondering where the portal’d open that time. Wondering what would come out of it. Wondering what had come after the hellhounds this month. “Oh lord, you’re right. That is me. Yeah, I’ll take another.” The neighbor passed it off as he came back to stand with them. They always made a line. At least, what he thought was a line. The physics was all messed up sometimes still. He was pretty sure he had stared at the portal too long that one time, when all the lightning turned into tentacles. Lines didn’t always make lines anymore. But usually all the neighbors that were left went to the backyards to watch the dark clouds rolling in. And they all stood in lines when they did. No one wanted to stand closer to the clouds. But no one wanted to be a coward and stand farther away. “Bein’ cowards was how ya died,” Pete muttered. 

“What’s that, Ben?” The neighbor’s wife asked. Ben. That’s right. That was him. 

“Oh, nothing. What was after the hellhounds?”

Another beer cracked open. It was a constant chorus along the always-shortening line as the clouds came in, beer and lightning and stronger things popping and cracking like fingers getting ready for a fight. “Oh, lotsa things, Ben,” the neighbor said on an inhale, having drunk his new beer in one go. “The tornadoes, the acid rain, the locusts-”

“The locusts, again,” the wife reminded. 

“Right, they’d happened once before, too. After the locusts was…was the…that big ole earthquake, that one what lasted two damn hours or somethin nuts like that.”

The wife nodded. “That’s when our boy went off, after that. Went to try and get to the city. See how all that mess was. It…it musta been messy…”

“Well now hold on,” Ben said, banging his can on his cast. “What did this then? All those things wasn’t this month.”

“Oh you crazy old man, ya done fell down your own steps because your lines went all wrong again,” the wife explained. 

“Stared too long at the Mind Flayers,” the neighbor nodded, staring at the clouds as they came. “…Those’re evil lookin things, ain’t they.”

It wasn’t so much a question, so the wife’s response wasn’t so much an answer. “Yep. Everythin’s evil-lookin now.”

“Ey y’all,” a voice called. A girl younger than the wife was shouting to them, and indicated a board that had writing on it that John….Benjamin….? couldn’t read. Too far away. Too many lines all wrapped up in physics. “We’re taking bets on it. So far we got frogs, zombies, and some crazy shit called a ‘bomb cyclone.’ Wanna add?”

Adding. Ben used to be able to add. What the hell had he written hellhounds on his leg for? “I want it to be a storm,” the neighbor answered. “Put me down for blizzard.”

“Ooh, blizzard, that’s a good one. What’d you think, ma’am?”

She must have stared at the portal too long, too. “I’ll put one down on zombies. The dead haven’t walked the earth yet, and that’s in scripture.”

“Fire.” Pete said, like he knew it. 

“What’s that, John?”

“Fire,” he repeated again. It was always darkest before dawn. Time was all wrapped up in physics. It was hard to keep track of what had happened and what hadn’t. Maybe he’d been thinking of hellhounds when he fell. 

“The ole coot says fire,” the neighbor answered louder for him, but before the younger girl could reply there was a massive crack as the first string of lightning hit the plain. 

The town cheered. What was left of it. Nothing left to lose, after all. The town got smaller every time, the cheering a little quieter, but it wasn’t called loss anymore. Ben remembered the cheering from the last time, whatever that apocalypse had been. There’d been too many since God had saved the children and the pious. He joined in the cheering as more and more tendrils of lightning struck the earth, cracking the sand. It was how it always started. He was pretty sure it was how it always started. 

Dark clouds rumbling in.

The neighbors all in what was most likely a line.

Beer and stronger things falling in and out of mouths like war cries.

Lightning in the clouds.

Lightning out of the clouds.

Darkest before the dawn.

But there wasn’t a dawn.

Or was there?

A new dawn. 

The dawn of something new.

A dark dawn stretching on and on because time was all mixed up.

John would stare at that time, too. He always stared. Stare. Stair. That was right. The lines on his cast didn’t say hellhounds. They said ‘stairs.’ Lines were too wrapped up in physics. And physics was all messed up since the…the…what had the neighbor’s boy called them?

He won the bet as the first fireball fell from those dark, evil-looking clouds. But he usually won the bet. Time was all lined up in physics like less and less neighbors in their backyards. And it got a little mixed up for him sometimes.

He downed his beer, cheering like the rest of them, getting hard to his feet to watch.